[CWIS'S NOTE] Up today I have a Q&A from ABenjaminButton. Ben is a 24 year-old ABDL from the United States. He's currently traveling the world and making a lot of new friends from this community in the process, a regular little padded ambassador. You may know Ben from his Tumblr blog or Fetlife. His stuff has also appeared here many times, including an entry about the letter of thanks he wrote to me in 2012, when he was graduating high school and writing letters to all of the people who'd influenced him during his formative years. The story of Ben's two summer vacations to the cottage also appears in my e-book.
Ben is my 'little bro' on Fetlife. If you know me personally you know I don't go out just scooping up Fetbros, amassing a vast collection of diaper boys to tag on my profile as I go. Those who get close enough to acquire 'little brother' or 'little' status - on Fetlife and in real life - are certified dope af in ABDL life, but they've also proven to be amazing in real life too - and they've demonstrated that they care about me outside of this fetish lifestyle. For me, that's the most important part. Ben definitely has done that, many times over. Those are the relationships that mean the most to me.
Nearly 70 people have taken the time to complete Q&A's for this blog, and I appreciate them all. I do try to call special attention to entries that speak to me - and, especially, ones that I believe will speak to you. I've been waiting for Ben to do a Q&A for a long time. I hope you take the time to really read this one...
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Q&A With Abenjaminbutton
Name/Nick: ABenjaminButton
Age: 24
City/State/Country: USA/Italy
AB/DL/BabyFur/Other? AB/DL
When did you first realize you were ABDL?
I have a very distinct memory when I was 6-7 years old of having a movie night/sleepover with my best friend at the time. Up to this point, bedwetting had become fairly infrequent, so much that I had stopped wearing pull-ups. The pull-ups and the bedwetting were also up to that point something I noticed no interest in, and actually hated/was very embarrassed about. The night of this sleepover something suddenly turned over in my head when I noticed that my best friend was wearing one of the 90’s era plain white Goodnites. I remember being totally unable to look away from it, and just completely obsessed that someone my age was still wearing a diaper that looked like it was actually designed to fit him. By this time my little sister was about two years old and diapers were still in steady supply at home. As I was unable to stop thinking about my best friend still wearing diapers, curiosity got the best of me and I finally started wearing my little sister’s diapers for probably a few weeks until my mom caught on. The incredibly humiliating conversation that followed just went along the lines of “do you need these,” to which I was adamant I didn’t. Though it wouldn’t be too long after that the obsessive diaper thoughts would return.
What steps did you take to get your diaper 'fix' as a child and/or teen?
It wasn’t too long after the initial getting caught that I began to start simulating my own diapers, mostly by using toilet paper folded up inside of underwear or making these crazy bulky cloth diapers by folding up a bed sized fleece blanket of mine into this roman toga style deal. There was a brief period of “borrowing” large size toddler diapers that the church I grew up in kept in its nursery. (Forever repenting of my sins for that one) Other than that there was no real opportunity for me to get my diaper ‘fix’. For years I would have what I think are the classic AB/DL dream of going to a big store discovering a huge diaper section that sold the equivalent of what’s on the AB/DL market today, somehow managing to buy them, and then waking up juuuuuust before getting to try them on. That recurring torment all changed however when I turned sixteen.
If you’re not from the states you may not know that at sixteen (at least in the State of Florida) you are permitted to drive alone if you’ve completed all of your tests by your birthday. Not too long after getting my license I was making frequent hour long trips between where I lived and my cello lessons in the next city over. Where I grew up in Central Florida it is super rural, with seemingly endless straight stretches of highway through farms that surround the towns. There was this rogue CVS pharmacy right in the middle of said commute and after my late night lessons and orchestra meetings I would always pass by imagining how it wouldn’t be too difficult to just go right in and buy diapers. I always paid very careful attention to how many cars there were in the parking lot as I drove by. More than one car and that meant there was probably someone else inside shopping. Over time I promised to myself that the night I drive by and there is only one car I’m just going to suck up my fear and go in. So one very late night driving back from a prom my plan finally came together. The single car in the parking lot at 2:00am indicated I would finally be able to finally fulfill my diaper wearing obsession. I pulled in to a parking spot, looked into the window from my car spotting a very non-judgmental older lady running the register. It was now or never. With cash in hand, I walked very directly into the store, feeling shaky and sweaty all over, on the outside probably looking like I was going to rob the store. Went straight to the diaper isle in the back where there were Depends lined up right next to the Goodnites. With my AB side cheering me on I chose the Goodnites, and to the register I went, placing my big kid pull-ups on the counter, and shakily handing the lady at the register my cash. Fast-forward to the most exhilarating hour drive home, lucky I didn’t have an accident as many times as I looked at the package of Goodnites sitting in the passenger seat. The first thing I thought when I got to my bedroom and opened up the package was “these diapers are huge,” as I had up to this point gotten used to the barely fitting large size pull-ups I had stolen from my church nursery. Going to the pharmacy in the middle of nowhere to buy Goodnites and eventually the old plastic-backed four-tape Depends (RIP) never became easy, but after several trips over the next few years I began to relax just a little bit.
Have you dealt with the shame and regret that is the binge/purge cycle? Please explain.
Over time I began to slowly become more and more daring wearing diapers around my family at home, to church youth group, or short weekend boy scout campouts where I knew I wouldn’t have to change. What was important about my ‘diaper development’ so to speak is that even to this day everything I’ve done has been very slow moving. I think for this reason, mixed with the fact that I’m just a very money-conscious person, I’m lucky to have never experienced the binge/purge cycle. Maybe a little bit of the binge, during weeks in high school or college when I was particularly stressed I would go through my diaper supply faster than usual. But by the time I started buying my own diapers, I was already going through the process of coming out to myself and eventually others abut being gay. I think in a way that being gay was so much more at the forefront of my mind that I had less time to feel bad about being AB/DL. Looking at pictures of other AB/DL boys online, wearing diapers, or getting into a little headspace was always my very private refuge from frequent panic attacks over school or work. l think in a way because being AB/DL was so clearly a helpful thing for me that out of all the things I should have purged in my life as a teenager, AB/DL was the least of them.
Do your parents and/or siblings know about you and diapers? If so, please explain how, and how they reacted?
I’m convinced that my dad knows to some degree. I’ve never talked about being AB/DL with either of my parents, but I believe on a few occasions in high school my dad found me having fallen asleep with my laptop still open to one of the old AB/DL social networking sites. He once made a comment along the lines of, “you should really close your laptop before going to sleep.” My dad is an interesting character though as he’s admitted to me as being bisexual and has over the past few years briefly shared his experiences with me experimenting with different kinks when he was younger. He has also taken note of my collection of footie pajamas and dress shirt style rompers when a few years ago we did a cross-country train trip. As is normal behavior for me, I was already planning to wear my footie pajamas around the lounge in the morning and to the dining car for breakfast, so he decided to surprise me with his own “#1 Dad” footie pajamas that he bought for himself to wear on the train. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cringe at the idea of wearing what I considered as low-key AB/DL clothes in public with my own father. But it ended up being super fun not just for us, but for everyone else on the train watching a father and son just being super extra on a slightly boozy cross country trip. To this day it’s my favorite memory I have with my dad.
I’m super lucky to have probably one of the world’s most accepting dads. We’re super close about everything and talk a lot even while I’m traveling far away from home. Because he grew up in a time where being anything but a straight married man was unacceptable, he’s made it very clear to me that he wants us to be as open about our lives as I’m comfortable with. I’ve thought about sharing with him how I’m part of this big awesome community and how it frames a lot of the relationships I’m in. I hate having to tell him about this awesome AB/DL friend of mine and frame it with some fictitious story about us meeting through mutual friends or whatever. As being an AB/DL becomes a bigger part of my life I think I want to at least briefly bring it up to him some day but I think I’ll continue to save that conversation for a later time.
Some experts believe that we become the way we are because of traumas experienced at an early age, including abuse and/or neglect. Do your life experiences bear this out?
I’ve racked my brain for years trying to figure out if I can really point to a childhood event, traumatic or not that could help explain my development into becoming an AB/DL. I do have a younger sister who was born when I was around five years old and I suppose I could credit losing my “baby” status as being a less than pleasant time but I really attribute my being AB not so much to losing my babyhood as I do to simply having a very privileged childhood experience. Perhaps this is just seeing the glass half-full, but all my memories about childhood are feelings of comfort and security, hot Florida days playing outside my house or at the beach where we went a lot as kids. My parents and grandparents were very warm people always cuddling and singing to us. My mom is a pianist and I used to take cozy naps with my big sister under the piano at home while she would practice. There was a carefree attitude to being a kid that was so impactful to how I see and process the world today, that even outside of little space helps me react to situations calmly and, when I am stressed out or depressed, retreat into as a healthy way to cope.
As far as my DL-ness goes I can only point to early tactile experiences where I used to simply like the feeling of having something thick between my legs like a pillow or blanket. I used to have a pair of overalls where I could hang the straps that go over my shoulders up on this treadmill we had in my home growing up. I know this sounds like a major child-safety hazard but I remember I used to love the feeling of hanging there only supported by the seat of my overalls. To this day that feeling has made me very curious to delve more into play where I’m bound by rope or am wearing constricting clothes while also being suspended in the air.
For the little dunces, please tell us about what it was like to discover this fetish/lifestyle on the Internet. Please be at least 18 at the time of writing, but be specific about what age you discovered it, what sites helped you, and keep this part PG for obvious reasons.
I’m not sure just how AB/DL I’d be today if it weren’t for the internet. My memory is hazy on the names of sites I first discovered but I remember finding this blog early on, a story that came up in a graduation thank-you letter I wrote to you back in 2012. The content that you wrote about goes back to pre-internet and what I read is the reason why I’m still to this day interested in meeting older members of the AB/DL community to hear their stories about the history of the scene and how it developed into modernity.
I also don’t really need to go into detail about how the internet in general is also sketchy as hell, especially when I was googling anything I could about boys (as a developing gay kid does) and diapers circa 2007-2012. There were many rabbit holes I went down where I could foresee a huge danger in developing an attraction for images and stories that were not appropriate. I think now with the advent of Tumblr, Reddit, Fetlife, and a big community of people committed to moderating behavior, that exploitative part of the internet is thankfully becoming less easy to find.
For collegebabies/DLs, did this interest affect your college experiences? If so, how?
When I was eighteen I opted out of going to a more career specific state school in Florida for a small liberal arts college in NYC. This decision was so important for growing and exploring as an AB/DL because living in one of the biggest cities in the US afforded me the option of meeting so many people. I never really had a problem managing my work and being AB/DL just like I didn’t have a problem balancing other hobbies or relationships. This goes back to the binge/purge question where, because I took everything in small baby-steps, (baddum-tsh) I never felt like I was putting too much attention into my AB/DL exploration that it was negatively affecting my school.
How has this fetish affected your social life and/or dating?
Dating-wise I have a terrible history of falling in love with my straight best friends, which never ends well. Over the past few years I’ve started to make a conscious effort to devote more of my time to people who more closely line up with my sexuality. This thinking spills a little bit into how I balance time between my vanilla and kink friends. Romance aside, I feel an obligation to make myself available to meeting up with other AB/DL people especially while I’m traveling because I have learned now from experience that making a real life connection with someone who shares this fetish has huge benefits to self-esteem and self-confidence on both sides. All that said, I’ve experimented a bit letting my AB/DL life mesh slightly with my vanilla life. Most notably between my gay friends who I want to discuss my dating life with but not have to concoct some elaborate lie how me and a person of interest didn’t meet though an AB/DL party or our Tumblrs. I know it’s not the same situation for everyone, but personally speaking, telling my best vanilla friends about being AB/DL added this really special depth to our friendship where they then became open about things they wouldn’t have shared before. For example, I found out one of my friends who grew up in a very conservative Christian family had a very secretly kept BDSM life of his own, that for the first time in his life he was able to talk about with another person outside of the scene.
What % of your sexual activities and/or masturbation incorporate diapers? Has this caused problems for you?
It was a big fear of mine for awhile that I would not be able to have a relationship with someone that didn’t incorporate diapers, because I never watched normal gay porn and couldn’t bring myself to think about anything but diapers when I masturbated. Luckily for me that all changed when I had my first real sexual relationship with a boy in my fraternity. Ironically he was my little as I was the upperclassman “big” assigned to him as a mentor for his first year at college. (We would eventually coin the term “bigcest” as we were the first known gay couple to come out of my fraternity’s big little system) Despite being his big, he taught me basically everything I know about gay sex and being romantic outside of an AB/DL scenario. It’s very much a mind game teaching your brain to be turned on by more than one fantasy, especially when the AB/DL one works fairly consistently, but I want to someday have a relationship with someone where being AB/DL is just a facet of a dynamic sexual relationship where we are both able to cater to each other’s specific fantasies.
If you get into the regression aspect of ABDL please tell us more about that. If you do not, and you have feelings about being lumped into a fetish involving it, explain how it makes you feel.
Since deciding I wanted to make being AB/DL a part of who I identified as I always used to lean heavily in the direction of being more DL since I knew I was sexually attracted to wearing diapers alone and knew I didn’t regress to a level of little space that my other AB/DL friends did. But as I’ve begun to reflect on my needs emotionally I discovered that there was an element of being cared for and loved unconditionally that I required to feel calm. I’ve discovered awhile ago that wearing things like onesies and colorful clothes that reminded me of my childhood made me feel cute and small, an aesthetic I could project that not only relaxed me but made me more sure of myself. Like scratching this “mental itch” to feel small meant that I was listening to needs I didn’t necessarily understand but indicated I cared enough about myself to do something this bizarre. I think agreeing with your little side, and letting that little person inside of you actually be himself or herself is incredibly therapeutic and demonstrates a huge amount of self-care and self-respect. Most recently I’ve been experimenting with being little with a non-AB/DL daddy and am starting to understand more clearly who I am as a little and how coming away from that roleplaying just how happy and fulfilled I suddenly feel. Diapers are still a huge part of the equation for me but trying to focus on the age-playing and not the diapers for the first time is showing me new things and makes me very excited to continue along this funny journey of being an AB/DL.
